🧩 BND Motif Index · M1146
Splitting the vote
A third-party candidate is said to draw off one side's voters so the other side wins with less than half the vote: Hacks on Tap's 'several Democrats who win in two weeks with less than 50%' as the libertarian becomes Republicans' 'escape valve', 'the old Green Party thing coming back on the arse through the libertarians'; Nader's Florida votes in 2000. Unlike Spoiler candidate (M813), nobody planted him.
- 1claim filed under it
- 1left show it came up on
- 1right show it came up on
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🪜 rests on 🧩 Broken electoral math
⤵️ under it: 🧩 Spoiler candidate
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up, by the show's lean
🫏 left 1
⚖️ center 0
🦗 none of our center shows, so far
🐘 right 1
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, newest first, in our words, with where each was heard
- 2026-10-24 “Democrats could win certain elections with less than 50% of the vote due to third-party candidates.”
🎙️ Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 🎙️ Hacks on Tap
M1146 · first seen 2026-10-24 · what this is · how the index works